Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) released a 269-page discussion draft on June 4 of what they’re calling the Great American AI Act, the first serious attempt at a comprehensive federal AI governance regime, and it arrives with a three-year freeze on state laws regulating frontier model development tucked inside.

The bill is organized into four titles (Frontier AI Governance, Workforce, Cybersecurity, and Research, Development, and International Cooperation, per Tech Policy Press) and would codify the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the rebranded successor to the Biden-era AI Safety Institute, with $100 million annually authorized for fiscal years 2027 through 2029. Large frontier developers, defined as those with $500 million or more in annual revenue, would be required to publish AI frameworks and disclose catastrophic-risk thresholds, with “catastrophic risk” pegged to 50-plus deaths or injuries or $1 billion-plus in property damage.

The preemption clause is doing the political work. It targets state laws “specifically regulating the development” of AI models, not deployment or use, and a Trahan office summary cited by Roll Call confirms it would displace California’s AB 2013 training-data disclosure law and parts of SB 942 on watermarking.

That’s where the coalition fractures. Public Citizen, Public Knowledge, and the AFL-CIO oppose the clause. House AI Commission co-chairs including Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said the draft “cannot serve as the basis for productive dialogue.” Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI, put the test plainly: “A national AI standard should protect at least as much as it preempts.”

The timing isn’t accidental. A Cato Institute primer published this week frames the bill against Anthropic’s June 12 export-control suspension of its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, casting federal preemption as the cure for a patchwork that’s already producing compliance whiplash. Trahan, for her part, called the draft “an opening bid, not a final answer.” Co-sponsors Suhas Subramanyam, Scott Franklin, Scott Peters, and Erin Houchin signed on with the same understanding. The Section 230 debates began the same way.

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